A prototype version of Spyro: Year of the Dragon has been discovered, and it shows how much the platformer changed right before release.
As highlighted in this Resetera thread, Twitter user and YouTuber @Hwd405 has shared a ton of info about the 'September 4th, 2000 build of Spyro: Year of the Dragon.' In a thread, Hwd405 highlights the main changes like new music, previously unseen cut levels for Sheila, and plenty more. There's so much to discover in this build of the game, which you can see in full via Hidden Palace, but we'll cover some of the most noticeable changes in this story.
There's a little confusion about when this build of the game was published. According to Hidden Palace, this review build of Spyro 3 was built on September 4, 2000 (taken from the save file information) but it isn't the only build to have been created around this time, which can get a bit confusing. The main thing to remember here is that this version of the game would have been made a couple of months before Year of the Dragon's actual release on October 10, 2000.
With this in mind, it's surprising how many changes were implemented in the game right before it was released to the public. For instance, there were several changes to the game's soundtrack - mainly a bunch of cut or replaced tracks that differed in the final version of the game. Thanks to Hwd405, we can listen to some of the tracks that didn't make it into the final game, such as level themes for Spider Town, Crawdad Farm, and Starfish Reef.
Another major change to Spyro: Year of the Dragon is its audio dialogue. Most notably, several lines of dialogue were changed for the final game or are missing completely. You'd have to be a Spyro superfan to notice some of these subtle changes, but to name a few; all of Sparx's audio dialogue and all but one of Bianca's lines are missing; one of Hunter's audio messages appear to be a dev recording; and multiple characters refer to things that were later changed in the game.
As we said, there's so much to uncover about this build of the game that we can't fit it all into one story, so take a look at the Hidden Palace page to get a full rundown of the build.
This isn't the only relic shared online recently, as a prototype for the unreleased and unannounced Crash vs Spyro Racing has also been found.
